November 2, 2009

eBooks

I looked at Open Library and Google Books and agree with many of the observations of the other people in the class. I had actually downloaded a PDF copy of Greater England from Charles Dilke (1899) for another class last semester from Google Books. I found it interesting because I was able to use my full edition of Adobe Acrobat to take notes, highlight and index the book to the things that were interesting to me. I linked that into my Zotero library which allows me to have my research right there and I don’t have to go search my bookshelf for the book, and then rummage through my notes to find what I am looking for. I find it much easier to read an honest to goodness book, but the ease of keeping track of things for research makes eBooks very useful.

Another source for eBooks is Project Gutenberg. This site allows the community to contribute to the collection. It has a tools area where you can see the different tools that people use to scan the books. The interface is not as slick as Google but it does offert some audio versions of the books. The books are in different formats -WRITTEN text, pdf, AUDIO – MP3, Apple etc. Since I drive an hour or so per day to get to work, I’m amazed at how many books I have been able to “read” in the audio format. Getting them from the library or on-line from Project Gutenberg is a great time/money saver. Books under copyright I can get from the Library for free. Books out of copyright I can get from sites like this.